The Justin/Jeff Project: Nashville (1975)

In the spirit of the Julie/Julia project in which writer Julie Powell chronicles cooking all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 524 recipes in 365 days, I bring you the Jeff/Justin project. The Justin/Jeff project chronicles my descent into the filmography of Jeff Goldblum and will take as much time as it takes.

Jeff Goldblum's appearance in Robert Altman's film California Split was a let-down. There's no way around it. If you've seen Jurassic Park you're expecting some geeky "rockstar" or something, and you get some guy popping out of an office. From everything I've read my expectation for Nashville was that it would be some big turning point, that Goldblum would get a lot of screen time and have some profound role. Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin gave it a four star rating and declared it the best film of 1975, and it's on a lot of people's top movie lists. Let's just say I was expecting something really special.

Jeff Goldblum plays a character called Tricycle Man. He gets his name from the long, low-slung three-wheeled motorcycle that he rides. He doesn't have a single line in the movie.

Tricycle Man is a mysterious creature. He doesn't say anything, but in some ways he's the most constant thing in the entire film. It only adds to his mystique that he sits in a diner where tons of people are yapping about this and that and all the while he is doing magic tricks. Now, anybody can do magic tricks. I've lived in New York. People will do magic tricks at you all the time. A bar owner in Manhattan would pull me aside excitedly here and there to teach me a couple simple levitations. But Tricycle Man does not seem the least concerned whether or not anyone sees what he is doing. After some time, he attracts notice, and a woman begins to flirt with him, but there is no reason to believe that's what he wants.

As Tricycle Man continues to pop up, it feels almost like he's inhuman, like he's being teleported here and there, or even like he only exists in the focus of the viewer. Between Goldblum's signature locks and the nature of this character I was reminded first and foremost of the Marvel comics character The Beyonder. The Beyonder, in many ways, is not even a being. He is a reality. He is The Beyond. When he comes to earth for various reasons, but mainly for the "Secret Wars" and "Secret Wars II" stories, he merely appears in a variety of comic books doing Beyonder knows what. In another way, he's like some weird cowboy from a David Lynch film. In yet another, he seems like merely a function of the universe. He must be there. We may not know why, but it is the result of some sort of cosmic arithmetic.

Is Tricycle Man even the same guy every time? Maybe Nashville is like Jeff Goldblum's dark tower. A series of Jeff Goldblums from different ages and eras use this movie as a go-between. They traverse through this nexus at the middle of the multiverse on their various missions, and that's why Tricycle Man can be in all the right places at all the right times.

Jeff Goldblum is eternal, but you don't have to take my word for it.

The Justin/Jeff Project: California Split (1974)

In the spirit of the Julie/Julia project in which writer Julie Powell chronicles cooking all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 524 recipes in 365 days, I bring you the Jeff/Justin project. The Justin/Jeff project chronicles my descent into the filmography of Jeff Goldblum and will take as much time as it takes.

While Jeff Goldblum's character in Death Wish was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad kid, at least he played a noticeable character, integral to the plot, and got a decent amount of screen time. In California Split, featuring George Segal and Elliott Gould, he gets only the quickest of cameos, enough time to show his dorky face and then fade away. What do I remember of Jeff Goldblum's performance as Lloyd Harris in California Split? I remember him coming out of an office, talking to one of the main characters, smiling (maybe), and then I remember waiting for him to show up again. This was especially difficult in a movie that didn't seem too concerned with plot.

In all of the descriptions of Jeff Goldblum's appearance in California Split you'll read how Robert Altman really liked Jeff Goldblum. Altman found him performing in the comic review El Grande de Coca Cola and he just had to have Goldblum in his films. So, Goldblum pops out of an office and then he disappears. He is only noticeable years later when fans, like me, skim through his filmography trying to gain some kind of sacred knowledge from seeing every single Goldblum performance. This isn't even the Altman film that will help Goldblum's career. That will come in 1975 with his performance in the Academy Award nominated Robert Altman film Nashville.

What do we know of Jeff Goldblum's character Lloyd Harris in California Split? He's not really much of a character. He could be anyone. He could moonlight as Batman, or he could zip out of the office here and there as Superman. He could be the same character from Death Wish, only grown up, with a job, and a penchant for violating kind citizens. He could be the american psycho for all we know. But if we are to paint a picture more akin to the clues Robert Altman has given us, it seems pretty clear that Lloyd Harris is just a dweeby co-worker who probably doesn't have much of a life.

Thank goodness Jeff Goldblum went on to bigger and better things, because Lloyd Harris is not exactly the kind of character who sells an actor. Lloyd Harris is the kind of character you want to keep behind closed doors.